Herbert Beerbohm Tree - Personal

Personal

Tree married actress Helen Maud Holt (1863–1937) in 1882; she often played opposite him and assisted him with management of the theatres. Her charm also assisted the couple's entry into prominent social and élite artistic and intellectual circles. Their daughters were actresses Viola Tree (who married theatre critic Alan Parsons) and Felicity Tree (who married Sir Geoffrey Cory-Wright, third baronet) and poet Iris Tree (who married Curtis Moffat, becoming Countess Ledebur). Tree also fathered several illegitimate children, including six with (Beatrice) May Pinney and other mistresses, including film director Carol Reed and Peter Reed, the father of the British actor Oliver Reed. He was also the grandfather of Hollywood screenwriter and producer Ivan Moffat and the great-great-grandfather of actress Georgina Moffat.

Tree founded the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1904. He also served as president of the Theatrical Managers' Association and assisted the Actors' Benevolent Fund and the Actors' Association. For his contributions to theatre, he was knighted in 1909. During World War I, Tree contributed his celebrity by delivering patriotic addresses. He wrote several books discussing the importance of the theatre and the arts in modern society.

Tree's last professional undertaking was a visit to Los Angeles in 1915 fulfilling a contract with a film company. He was in America for the greater part of 1915 and 1916. He returned to England in 1917 and died, aged 64, from pulmonary blood clots. According to writer Vera Brittain, he died suddenly in the arms of her friend, the novelist Winifred Holtby, then aged 19 and working as a nursing assistant at a fashionable London nursing home where Tree was recuperating from surgery to repair a broken leg. His remains were cremated, and his ashes rest at Hampstead cemetery.